1
" For you she learned to wear a short black slipand red lipstick,how to order a glass of red wineand finish it. She learned to reach outas if to touch your arm and then nottouch it, changing the subject.she'd begin, orTo call your best friendsby their schoolboy namesand give them kisses good-bye,to look away when they say! So your confidence grows.She doesn't ask what you wantbecause she knows.Isn't that what you think?When actually she was only waitingto be stunned, and then do this,never rehearsed, but perfectly obvious:in one motion up, over, and gone,the X of her arms crossing and uncrossing,her face flashing away from you in the fabricso that you couldn't say if she wasappearing or disappearing. "
3
" Final DispositionOthers divided closets full of mother's things.From the earth, I took her poppies.I wanted those fandango foldsof red and black chiffon she doted on,loving the wild and Moorish music of them,coating her tongue with the thin skinof their crimson petals.Snapping her fingers, flamenco dancer,she'd mock the clack of castanetsin answer to their gypsy cadence.She would crouch toward the flounce of flowers,twirl, stamp her foot, then kick it outas if to lift the ruffles, scarletalong the hemline of her yard.And so, I dug up, soil and all,the thistle-toothed and gray-green clumpsof leaves, the testicle seedpods and hairy stemsboth out of season, to transplant them in my less-exotic garden. There, they bloomher blood's abandon, year after year,roots holding, their poppy heads noddinga carefree, opium-ecstatic, possibly forever sleep. "
